#lensha

[karniz]

2021 Commission; A Cast of Characters from Final Fantasy XIV.

Dubbed affectionally as the Shasiverse. Characters from left to right; Reno, Messalina, Vita'ya, Sokhatai, Y'shtola, Syn'thiel, Dzhambul, Shpoki, Holuikhan [Au Ra], Stenya [Hrothgar], Karniz, X'shasi, Thancred, V'jaela, Mani [on phone], Lensha, X'raleth.

Nothing rendered in 3D, no tracing. Yes, I do like to suffer. Hehe~

This was a very extensive project that took about six months from planning to finish. I don't normally offer full blown background art in any commission, but I have exceptions for an exceptional person.

♥ you star, you are truly a patron of the arts. [and soon to be Blender masstterrrr!]

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Get Early Access to illustrations & commission work I do when you become a Supporter! [Yes, these illustrations are fairly old!]

♥ Be a Supporter today! For more information and details, visit my: ✐ Patreon; patreon.com/karniz/ ✐ Ko-fi; ko-fi.com/karniz

[twelveswood]

And this batch for the ever lovely but bloggless Fina. ♥

[estrellita-chingona]

@mariposaoculta @estrellita-chingona

[starcunning]

25. Trust

I knew her for a little ghost

For @sea-wolf-coast-to-coast’s FFXIVWrite 2019. [Title] [AO3 mirror]

Perhaps even Fray’s judgment was not infallible. After all, he had bridled at the idea of doing favors for the Ondo, but when she had returned to the Tempest and seen the spires reaching up from the seabed, she had wept. She had remained there long after, and returned there too often. Whatever aetherial anchor the Crystarium offered her, she had rejected it, and found it easier to return to the sea.

Perhaps she was waiting for something. The second end to this lost world, maybe; she had expected it to vanish like morning dew or a dream upon waking. But Amaurot stood, and its people with it. And perhaps she was searching for something. The shades were happy enough to tell an eager child some histories and lecture her on a few customs, but invariably she reached the bounds of their knowledge.

Hythlodaeus would know the truth.

That thought circled the bounds of her skull like an eager predator, and every time it resounded she could not help but be reminded of the last man to think it. But Hythlodaeus did not appear and offer her answers, and even if she created a shade of Hades to walk this city—after all, she’d done such a thing before, and wasn’t that chilling?—he would have no knowledge she was not already possessed of.

Sitting atop the archway crowning the capital building, Shasi considered it anyway. There was always the possibility that she was choosing to ignore such things as she already knew, and the technique would bring her subconscious to the fore. It was a dangerous gambit, of course, and she wrestled with it, and with the binary decision to tell Urianger of her plans or to tell no one. It was Urianger, after all, who was most familiar with the technique, though she had never owned her part in it. To tell him would require an accounting for Myste and a confession that she was responsible—and in some way eager to do it again. Urianger had been patient with the impulses her grief had driven her to, being more than familiar himself, but she was not at all certain his trust extended so far.

There was a flicker of white in the streets below. It startled Shasi from her thoughts, and she tracked it with her eyes a long few moments—just a white point upon stone streets, little different from the black figures of the Amaurotines.

She came down the same way she had come up—by hand, feeling the grit of the facade beneath her fingertips. It was a long climb, and her heart was in her throat all the while, but it was not really the fall she feared. The last time she had seen him, after all, he had tried to kill her. And still she scrambled down the side of the building, pausing on the balcony over the portico to scan the streets again. The white figure—there—smaller than the titans who walked these streets in their robes of black.

She could have just gone back inside and taken the elevator back down to the ground floor, but it felt dangerous to take her eyes off him even for a moment, so when she climbed down onto one of the pillars, she pulled herself around it so that she climbed its inside, looking out over the city.

It’s dangerous to climb so high, little one! one of the shades admonished. “I’m coming down,” Shasi protested, and vaulted herself back to the street. Her bootheels hit the stone, and she hustled away, black robe fluttering behind her.

Shasi had never been much a rogue, but discretion was better than haste now, lest more of those well-meaning shades henpeck her on the approach and give her away. To the Polyleritae District, then—which Shasi could not help but think an oddity. He had never been so concerned with such things before. But a fluttering of white in a sea of black robes was not hard to track, even if the lion’s share of her experience had come from tailing beasts for the hunt clans and not Echo-blessed emissaries.

The figure rounded a corner, and Shasi hustled to catch up, but when she came around the edge of the building she found the white-robed figure staring back at her. She stopped short, hands frozen at her sides.

“I thought you were …” “Elidibus?” Lensha asked. “Yes. If I were, what would you have sought? Answers or the fight?” Shasi frowned. “I know which I am likelier to get.” Lensha’s gaze swept over her, scrutiny sharp as knives. She smoothed a hand over her own white robes. “But it does not stop you trying, does it.” Shasi lifted a hand to her chest, rubbing lightly at her breastbone. Whatever fragile hope of peace the Emissary had offered once had broken like her rib cage beneath the force of his blade stroke. “What are you doing here?” Lensha only looked at her flatly. “This is my city,” she said. “As you well know.”

Shasi shook her head. “How could I have known that?” “Because it was yours once, Menelaus.” The name was unfamiliar to her, and yet it resonated. “Menelaus,” she repeated, feeling the shape of it in her mouth. “Or shall I call you by your title instead? You did abdicate,” she said, testily. “What are—what do you mean? How could you know all this?” Lensha looked at her a while longer, and Shasi understood then the expression that all those masks hid. It was patronizing and a little discomforting, to be looked upon as an ignorant child. “Sappho told me,” she said, as though it were obvious. “Though if you do not recognize your own name, I doubt you would recognize hers. Let us call her, instead, Igeyorhm.”

Shasi only stared at Lensha in return. It was quite the admission, especially given this was the very first time Lensha had deigned to tell her about herself. “What should I call you?” Shasi wondered. “Lensha Hathaar,” replied the other woman. “But you know my name!” Lensha only tilted her head briefly. “Be grateful for that,” she said. “Why did you come to this city of ghosts?” “For answers,” Shasi said. “So that is why your hand never went to your blade. I see. Well, hero, I wish you the joy of finding a satisfactory end.” Shasi’s expression turned dubious, the mirror to Lensha’s own. “I doubt that.” “Nothing ever ends,” Lensha said instead. “We walk the same circles, lifetime after lifetime. We think the same thoughts. All that we have done we will do over and over again. You will seek closure until your breath leaves your lungs, leaving others to seek it after you.” “You came here the same as I,” Shasi said. “Yes,” Lensha said. “To lose it later, I must have it now. Do you see?”

She didn’t, not at all, but that was always the way of things with Lensha. “Tell me everything you know,” Shasi said, not a demand but a gentle request. Lensha regarded her a long moment. “Not yet,” she said. “There are things you must see first.” “And then will you trust me?” “No,” Lensha said. “But perhaps I will answer you. If you listen.”

[tu-sugar-mami]

So i was listening to music i havent heard in years and i stumbled into this one, Stuck in love by Kim Hyung Hee, also the goblin ost but ok, and damn guys, all i could think about was that it fits with supercorp and im dying bc gosh i cant, really this whole crisis thing is like ahhhhsakhsljañkkjvdsñka i just cant

[poetical-irony]

a troll call dump. turns out i drew 38 trolls in 3 weeks. dont think that the end of troll call will stop me. oh no. i got to keep on moving

[pervasivescariness]

[ October . 12 . 2018 ]

REVENANT - Lensha Hathaar

@seraphicrose

I’m really loving all the prompts you guys have chosen this year! So many creative, interesting ones on this year’s list. It is fantastic~ Today we have revenant, which for those of you who are not aware, is someone who is returned (from the dead). I kinda went for a more vengeful spirit feel with this. I was inspired by the wonderfully ghostly color pallet on this character! (Also I couldn’t pass up another opportunity to draw more spooky veils~)

Thank you for letting me draw your lovely OC, she’s got a great design and an excellent color pallet! <3

[mrmichaelchadler]

Liyana

“When you’re little, you have more endurance than God is ever to grant you again. Children are man at his strongest. They abide.”—Rachel Cooper (Lillian Gish) in “The Night of the Hunter”

Amidst all the wondrous visuals, both real and imagined, in Aaron and Amanda Kopp’s “Liyana,” the most resonant of them all are the beautiful faces of its young storytellers, gleaming with excitement at their evolving creation. Five boys living at Likhaya Lemphilo Lensha, a home for orphans in Swaziland, are encouraged by Gcina Mhlope, acclaimed writer and anti-apartheid activist, to collaborate in the penning of an adventure yarn. She guides the children through a series of workshops, asking them questions designed to prompt the next step of their journey without ever overriding their voices. The purpose of this exercise is to provide a safe space for these resourceful souls to delve into memories that they have stored away, interweaving them with fictional characters and scenarios as a mode to heal. As Lady Gaga put it so eloquently during a recent late night appearance, our brains are adept at placing trauma in a box, filing it away “so that we can survive the pain.” 

Destin Daniel Cretton’s “Short Term 12” remains one of the best films I’ve seen about the cathartic power of artistic expression, showing how the teenagers at a foster-care facility channel their deep-seated wounds into haunting poetry. One girl opens up about the sexual abuse she’s endured at the hands of her father by devising a shattering parable about an octopus robbed of its tentacles by a manipulative shark. Though the film wasn’t a documentary, Cretton based the script off his own experiences of working at a group home for at-risk youth, and the influence of real life is readily apparent in his bracingly authentic characters. The fact that “Liyana” is a work of non-fiction may be why its directors keep the scarring backstories of their subjects at arm’s length. Save for a brief sequence in which the boys recount via voice-over the anguish of their upbringing, context regarding the specifics of their plight is typically reduced to title cards. With a running time clocking in just long enough to count as feature-length, the Kopps’ tightly edited picture seamlessly blends vividly detailed story illustrations by Shofela Coker with the energetic performances of the boys, animating the still imagery with their spirited expressions and body movements. 

The fragments of faces mixed and matched by the boys to create their ideal protagonist strikingly mirror the composite nature of the three-act tale they’re tasked with dreaming up together. Just as the diverse array of features meld to form the heroine of Liyana—whose gender may be another way to separate her from the particulars of the boys’ identities—the narration made by her quintet of authors seamlessly blends their words into one voice. While much about their past is left to our speculation, there is a great deal that can be gleaned from their invented story, which opens with the death of Liyana’s parents after they contract the AIDS virus. One of the boys describes the strain of HIV as a creature that pops out and bites the father, a frightening fantasy the film refrains from visualizing. We soon learn that Swaziland has the world’s highest infection rate, effecting over a fourth of the country’s population, a crisis previously explored in Aaron Kopp’s 2009 short film, “Likhaya.” This has resulted in over 200,000 children being left orphaned and vulnerable to disease. The film’s most excruciating sequence occurs when a kid, sniffling with dread, waits for the results of his HIV test in the deafening silence of a doctor’s office. Bookending this moment is a temporary lull in the boys’ action-packed tale, prompted by the collapse of Liyana, who lies on the ground as vultures circle overhead. 

What initially sets Liyana off on her journey is the kidnapping of her younger twin siblings by robbers not unlike the real-life ones who infiltrated the children’s home three months earlier. Naming the twins after lightening and thunder, inspired by the storm accompanying their birth, is a nice touch, conveying the resilience of life moving forward despite volatile circumstances. During the girl’s epic trek to rescue them, malevolent predators materialize in the form of crocodiles and hyenas, both characterized by fiery red eyes. Even though the humans and creatures in these animated shots are appropriately stagnant, resembling the hyperreal visions of our unchanging dreams, their environment vibrates with life—fire crackles, air buckles and the camera moves with the fluidity of one’s inner mind. Various visuals are lifted directly from the boys’ own surroundings, such as Liyana’s loyal bull or the drops of morning dew nestled upon branches. Aaron Kopp’s cinematography makes the African location itself appear magical, particularly when a sudden storm shrouds the land in darkness. 

As tough as the subject matter may get at times, the film is guaranteed to be an uplifting one for viewers of all ages, with its emphasis placed on the joy of its subjects, whether it be in their everyday life or in the midst of their creative process. The kids acknowledge that life will not end happily for everyone, yet that should not prevent us from holding onto hope, utilizing stories like the one they’ve crafted to fuel our collective desire to fight adversity in all forms. When Liyana’s story—and the movie—draws to a close, the filmmaker’s find poignant ways to visually link her world with that of the authors (note the spiral designs grafted ever-so-subtly onto the live-action sky). “They are like one family now,” notes one boy, describing not only the group of orphans taken in by Liyana, but also his own irreplaceable band of brothers. Humbled by their strength, one has little doubt that they will, as Rachel Cooper affirmed, “abide and endure.”

from All Content https://ift.tt/2yt8Qxq

[starcunning]

#30ShadowScreenshots 6. A group photo with your Shadowbringers Exploration buddies

Scheduling is hellish, so group photo isn’t really a thing that can happen, and also (particularly today) who it is that I play this game with is ... contentious, let’s go with.

But here’s the Shasiverse light party, AKA Idiot Cat Squad.

X’shasi Kilntreader + Vita’ya Sophronia [MNK] in the Peaks

X’shasi Kilntreader + Shpoki Attiqa [BLM] in Coerthas

X’shasi Kilntreader + Lensha Hathaar [WHM] in the Shroud

[starcunning]

Catocala sappho

Happy Friday! A little while ago some friends and I did a fic exchange (mostly out of concern our tastes were too obscure and specific for Chocolate Box, so, there is that). I’ll be filling other requests from that set over time, but today’s offerings come from the Erebidae. Because people wanted more from that setting, I guess.

“Catocala sappho” takes place approximately concurrently with “Praxis inordinata” and “Acherontia atropos.”

[F/F][WOL (Lensha Hathaar)/Igeyorhm)][Queerplatonic relationship][That good good soulbonding thing][Just a lot of metaphors and metaphyics][A bad idea, though not as bad as any Kallisti’s ever had][ARR 2.56][Erebidae][2k words]

The mortal world reeks. She, in her absence, has forgotten this; there are more pleasant reminders than fetid water and mold, but such are the circumstances. It was the confluence of aether that alerted them, the surge of light energy—Hydaelyn intervened directly but rarely, and always this was a situation that merited investigation by one of their number.

It was supposed to have been Lahabrea. Igeyorhm realizes this the moment she sees Hydaelyn’s Champion alone in the darkness. He has crowed about it enough in the Chrysalis, preening with self-assurance despite the fact that it cost him his mortal vessel. Well, Lahabrea is not here, and Igeyorhm is not minded to await him.

“Lensha Hathaar,” she names the other woman. ��You are not Lahabrea,” says the Warrior of Light.

She looks like a ghost, pale as moonlight in the dark of the sewer; the only tell that gives the lie to her ethereality is the dark water that stains her white robes. Igeyorhm can see the light that strains against the bounds of her mortal form—she is untethered from Her blessings, Igeyorhm surmises at once, but she is undimmed, and far brighter than the champions of the Thirteenth.

“I am not,” confirms Igeyorhm, “but your bargain was not with him alone, but all our party.” Igeyorhm extends a hand. Lensha looks at her a long moment, and takes it only after a period of introspection marked only by the dripping of water down the dank walls. There is no sound but the Miqo’te’s breathing and the rush of water, and then there is only the latter and the pair are gone.

Lensha does not accompany her to the Chrysalis when Igeyorhm makes her report. Lahabrea is there, though, and he is not happy.

“She was to be my project,” he snarls, intemperate as ever. “You have a project,” Igeyorhm reminds him. “Yes, and you were supposed to be helping me with that!” “I did,” Igeyorhm shrugs. “Ysayle Dangoulain has abandoned the purposes of Light and seeks to enact the will of her goddess, incarnate in her. She no longer needs me.” “I had been assured the situation with the Archbishop was well in hand,” agrees Elidibus, looking loftily down at them both. Igeyorhm is surprised he is not of Lahabrea’s party; both are of the Source, after all. But that has not always meant kinship, though Emet-Selch is similarly pliant to the Emissary’s whims. “Did you require my help in the city proper, Lahabrea? I would hate for you to disappoint us all,” Igeyorhm says. The frostiness of her tone leaves the again unquestionable. His choler rises. “I do not need a subordinate that seeks to usurp me,” he snaps. “Enough,” Elidibus says. “Igeyorhm, will you not surrender the Champion?” “Not to him; not willingly,” Igeyorhm says. “She knows him, and has reason to distrust. She has no greater reason to distrust me than any one of us, and I am between projects, as I mentioned. Iceheart was a success, was she not?” “For now,” Elidibus agrees. “Lahabrea. Are things proceeding in Ishgard?” “Yes,” says the Paragon, clearly annoyed at being backed so thoroughly into that corner. “Then Igeyorhm is right. You may ask Pashtarot to aid you, if you are so sorely pressed.” “I’ll take it under consideration,” Lahabrea says, clearly having already dismissed the idea. Elidibus dismisses him with a wave, his avian mask swinging about, regard settling on Igeyorhm once more. “Any other concerns of note?” “Where is Nabriales?” Igeyorhm asks. “I had not thought you so inclined to his presence,” the Emissary notes with lofty amusement. “Do not mistake me, I am glad enough not to see him here, but he had an identity established in Ul’dah. From my earliest inquiries, Hydaelyn intervened to save one of Her chosen after assassins were loosed upon a party she attended. Nabriales should have known of this. Nabriales should have spoken of this. Thus I must ask: where is Nabriales?” “Where indeed,” mutters Elidibus. “I have my suspicions, but I should return to Garlemald anon.” Elidibus’s lips press into a thin line of displeasure, and then he lifts a white-gloved hand, dismissing her to her new duties.

Lensha watches the Floating Isles with impassive eyes. She does not move, does not even flinch, when Igeyorhm materializes at her side. Her aether ripples; that is all. Its wan white humming tendrils stray a long way from her corporeal form; she is half out of her body, nearly a ghost in a living body. Igeyorhm was not aware she still had a heart, but something in her throbs with sympathy.

“You are back,” Lensha says, and there is no emotion attached to the notion. “I could have fled while you were gone.” “Yet you did not.” Lahabrea would have treated the situation with less subtlety; were he called away to Ishgard or elsewhere, he might have poisoned her and left her to sleep until his return. Deudalaphon would have called upon the Lessers to stand by and attend her. “You could be far away on wings of aether by now,” the Ascian of the Thirteenth notes. “Nowhere so far gone that you could not follow,” Lensha says. “This was your cohort’s doing.” “I had thought so, but Nabriales is absent, and not likely to be involved.” “Nabriales,” the Champion of Hydaelyn echoes. “I had been assured he was no longer a threat.” Her annoyance bristles, the spines of a great leviathan breaching the surface of placid waters. Like that fin, her emotions stretch, spread, and sink once more into the murk. “Would you know if he were dead?” “Eventually. Perhaps that explains his absence, though Elidibus did not seem to think so.” “And Lahabrea? I had been told he was not dead.” Igeyorhm smiles. She settles beside Hydaelyn’s Champion, who shies from her—not bodily, but her aether shrinks, withdraws, so that shadow does not touch light. “He is not,” Igeyorhm admits, “alas.”

Lensha turns then to look at her, fixing her with luminous eyes. They are the color of the First, flooded with light, even her pupils made bright by chatoyance. “Why you?” she asks. “It was thought that I was better suited for this particular assignation,” Igeyorhm says. “Lahabrea can be … volatile.” “And you are steadier,” Lensha says, tone flat with disbelief. Igeyorhm sifts through the reasoning in her mind: Lahabrea is stronger than she is, being of the Source, and put to better use elsewhere; Lahabrea is more objectionable. These things answer the question why not Lahabrea? but speak nothing on the matter of Why Igeyorhm? There is, of course, the simple fact that she arrived first; there is also the fact that she treated successfully with the champion of the Thirteenth. Too well, in fact. Igeyorhm puts the memory aside. It has been a long time since that place—and Shemhazai—became something other than what they once were.

She is seeking redemption in the eyes of Zodiark, she admits to herself. She must do now what had failed her before, and redeem herself thereby.

“Ah,” says Lensha. “So it’s penance.” Their aether has not intermingled; Igeyorhm can feel no such violation. “Your goddess told you this?” “People are not so difficult to figure out,” Lensha says, turning her face away. She delivers this judgment with disdain—with scorn, even—but Igeyorhm cannot find it written in the skeins of white that trail from the Warrior of Light’s body like a shroud. “What happened to the Thirteenth?” Igeyorhm looks to her, trying to discern cruelty in the shape of her mouth, the white folds of her gown, the twitching of her tail. Igeyorhm is familiar with every tell—with Mitron’s stolid judgment and Altima’s lofty superiority—and she looks for them in Hydaelyn’s Champion. There is nothing of the type written there. The question is merely the question, born of curiosity and not the desire to reopen old wounds. “It would be easier to show you,” Igeyorhm says, because even to unhostile ears it seems such a task to tell. “I cannot compel that,” Lensha says. “I can offer it to you,” the Ascian tells her, taking down her hood. Lensha nods. Her bright eyes rest upon the dark crystal that glimmers at Igeyorhm’s throat.

Igeyorhm reaches for her—not with hands or body, for the flesh is the merest nothing, but with all her being. Shadow brushes light for the first time and Lensha gasps. Igeyorhm hushes her, but she too is hesitant. “Your Goddess grants you insight,” Igeyorhm says, “and you pass the boundaries of another’s soul. Reflexively you have a way to return to yourself, something of your own being to anchor you. Focus on that now.” Lensha nods, placid as the pale moon, and Igeyorhm reaches for her once more. Lensha is so exposed, her aetherial being extending so far past the boundaries of the flesh; it is so easy for Igeyorhm to reach into her. She has practice, and with it, finesse; her darkness is not overwhelming, but trickles slowly into that vast whiteness. Similitude interlinks them, and they commingle slowly. There is more to Lensha than light and ghosts; her bitterness is the bitterness of brine. She is the sea and the tides, and Igeyorhm the storm that stirs the waves, darkness shot through with light in flashes that only illuminate the beauty of the tempest. Igeyorhm is not of the Source, and can never compete with the Source’s power, but she can bolster it, commune with it. It is and is not like mingling with Shemhazai, who was like the breath on her cheek. This is an intimacy so long foregone that for a moment Igeyorhm loses herself in it—and Lensha has a natural ability; without instruction she reaches for Igeyorhm. Moonlight through clouds, white spray on a black sea; water and wind and lightning whirl and combine in the stillness between them.

Then they are one landscape with two histories. The Champion of Light, sore-pressed and forgotten, bargaining her very being to save friends who may be dead anyway. The Champion of Darkness, too easily victorious, obliterating all she once loved.

The Thirteenth was her home and her heart and her doom, too ripe with umbral aether to ever be saved by the lantern-lights of Hydaelyn. All that had been was lost but its champions—one of them taken from that place by Elidibus, subordinate to the Emissary’s will. And the Warrior of Light that had failed to oppose her—the Warrior of Light whom she had loved, and defeated just the same—had been twisted by Calamity. Shemhazai could not recall the very concept of live, much less her beloved, and yet Igeyorhm had never been able to bring herself to eradicate this lingering trace of her failure. Sooner die than kill, and repent forever of her victory.

Lensha relinquished her hold upon her crystal, pouring the last of herself into this joining. Igeyorhm, too, let go; in the commingling of light and darkness the Martyr found compassion as deep and wide as the oceans. Sorrow like rain, tears like seawater; impossible to tell where one ended and the other began. Her purpose accomplished, Igeyorhm began to withdraw, remembering who she was—the place she had been born, the first time she heard her God’s voice, the oddities that set the Thirteenth Reflection apart from the Source it derived from.

Lensha did not move, did not reel away in turn, and it fell to Igeyorhm to rebuild herself, to sort her own being from Lensha’s so that the Champion of Hydaelyn could collect herself by process of elimination. With the last spark of darkness in a heart of light, Igeyorhm reached out for her, and saw there the trouble: Lensha’s identity was crafted of a thousand nos and no yeses. Hers was a being of negation, and Igeyorhm longed to weep, but she had long since forgotten.

Her tears were on the Warrior of Light’s cheeks anyway; Lensha’s pale aether hung unbound around her. Igeyorhm reached for her, setting a hand upon her shoulder and pulling her against her side. “It is overwhelming, I know,” Igeyorhm said gently. Lensha only blinked, as though oblivious to her own weeping, but she did not lift her head from the Ascian’s shoulder. Those silver eyes closed, and her tears dried.

Still, at the heart of her, Igeyorhm could taste the salt sorrow of the sea.

[starcunning]

Acherontia atropos

Happy Friday! Today I will be speedrunning the Eighth Umbral Calamity*. Part one was earlier.

Technically, this is the last scheduled update to Erebidae, but I’m doing a fic exchange and two of the requests therein pertain to either this universe or these characters. So please look forward to those in February after the exchange concludes.

OH AND I MADE A REQUEST TOO BUT IT’S ABOUT PASHTAROT. YOU’LL SEE WHY THAT’S FUNNY LATER.

*Eighth Umbral Calamity not guaranteed but strongly indicated.

[M/F] [WOL* (Kallisti)/Nabriales][If you’re looking for traditional-ass sex in here you will be disappointed.][If, however, you are subscribed to that Starcunning Soulbonding Bullshit package, you will be delighted.][This song is called: it’s a metaphor, fool!][Consensual snuff][Yeah, that’s what we’re doing in 2019.][Just a spectacularly bad idea all around][*technically Lensha Hathaar is the WOL; Kallie is one of her Echo-blessed companions][ARR 2.56][Erebidae][2.6k words]

Nabriales neither ate nor slept. As the days passed, this became obvious; he shared none of Kallisti’s concern for these needs. She could spear fowl from the air with lances of ice or call a levinbolt to stun the fish and frogs in a pond, cooking them over a fire of her own making, but for all that he sat by her hearth he never partook.

He could eat, and perhaps could remember how to sleep, he admitted; he simply had no need to do either. Sometimes he would touch her, the darkness of his aether spilling into her, as though into her very veins. And he would let her rest her head against his chest, leaning on the confines of his mortal frame—but when she looked upon him with anything other than her sight, she knew she was well past the bounds of his being. Slowly, the weakness of blood loss ebbed.

Through it all, her linkpearl remained silent.

“We should return to Mor Dhona,” Nabriales said one morning. It was crisp and cold—the sea tempered the teeth of winter somewhat, but Kallisti could see her own breath on the air when she answered him. “We?” “Yes, we.” “I have no idea what the situation is there,” Kallisti said, “and they haven’t called for me. What I’m more interested in is why you want to go.” “Your mortal fragility troubles me,” Nabriales said. “It was a nearer thing than I thought. And I yet require the Key.” “What? What key?” Nabriales looked at her, running a gloved hand through his hair, sweeping it back from his brow. “Do you recall the circumstances of our meeting?” “Minfilia? She’s the key?” Kallisti asked, feeling a flare of some hot emotion in the back of her mind. The Ascian only laughed at that, claws brushing her cheek, his aether stirring her own with that simple, possessive gesture. “Don’t be jealous, little fool,” he said. “Especially over a misunderstanding. Your Antecedent is of no interest to me. It was the staff I came for.” His thumb skimmed over her throat, stoking her pulse even as he pressed his fingertip to it. “Tupsimati,” she echoed, remembering at last. “What would you do with it?” “Solve the troublesome problem of your mortality, for one,” he said.

She looked at him, trying not to shiver from the cold, her breath a plume of white on the air, every puff of steam precious heat escaping her. Soon she would build a fire; she had not entirely forgotten the ways of her clan even after years of “civilizing” influence. “I didn’t realize that was a problem to be solved,” Kallisti said. “In most cases it is not,” Nabriales admitted. When he said no more, she reached for him, spilling her light into his darkness like a piercing ray. Perhaps this was not Hydaelyn’s purpose in granting her the Echo; Minfilia and Lensha had lamented often enough how little control they had over it—and even now she could not completely master it. Or else she should never have awoken to find herself at Laurentius Daye’s mercy. Nor could she compel a vision from Nabriales now—but there were other paths to understanding. She pressed against the boundary between them, and felt his surprise as her own.

It was the first time she had managed it without his prompting and guidance. The pride that swelled in her chest belonged to both of them. Nabriales still pressed a hand to her cheek, insofar as the distinction between them mattered; it was as true to call it her hand and his cheek, in moments like this.

He was afraid—they were afraid, and at the heart of that shared fear was the realization that Kallisti was the only thing Nabriales had been allowed to claim for himself since his ascension. She felt the fragility of her flesh-bound existence, the weight of mortality that seemed poised to snap the aetherial tether between the pair of them. She probed deeper, reaching into the core of him, that kernel of black crystal that maintained his sense of self even when they commingled.

He did not experience the world as she did. That much had long become obvious, the distinction made still more stark in that first communion in Sharlayan. Nabriales drew no distinction between aether and form; their shared sensation was unbounded by flesh. It was dulled by the layers they both cloaked themselves in; without that simple armor the ebb and flow of energy in the world might prove a distraction. She moved; he moved. As he had said. But he moved and he moved the world, all of reality bent to his superior perception.

They felt seconds as a lifetime; they felt eras as days.

She was such a small thing; a speck of light in a storm of darkness. Her life was like the flickering of a firefly. How could it matter? And yet it did. This had ceased to be a casual dalliance the moment he had joined his aether to hers—an impulsive decision made when Elidibus threatened his dominion, its consequences compounded ever since. From then ‘til now, her light seeping in through the cracks. Even when she withdrew, some part of her remained; some mote of light in a heart of darkness.

Nabriales was panting when she looked upon him again. It was such a curiously mortal reaction, she could not help but smile at it. She leaned in, kissing his slack mouth, awakening him from his daze. “I see,” she said. “Will it take long?” “No,” Nabriales told her. “Once we have the staff, I await only your readiness.” “Why do you need it?” she asked. “You don’t know what it does, do you?” he said, brow knitting in consternation. “No.” “That staff allows its bearer to gather vast quantities of aether from the surrounding environs and bring it to bear.” “And that will … make me immortal, somehow?” Nabriales scoffed, seeming annoyed. “You are already immortal. It is the flesh in which you reside that makes you fragile. You must renounce it.” “I have to die, you mean,” Kallisti said. “Does a tree die when it drops its leaves in winter?” he asked. “I wish only to unmoor you from the bonds of your mortality.” She considered that a moment, and found no reason to doubt him. Not when she had felt in her own breast his feelings for her.

It seemed foolish in retrospect to have ever questioned them in the first place, she had to own. “Alright,” she said. “The scholar gave you a prism of white auracite,” he said. “I will need it. And I will need your athame,” he said. “If it’s aether you need, there is a confluence in the old ruins,” Kallisti said. “Mhachi ritualists would use it. I remember …” She lifted a hand to her chest, stroking the smooth surface of her violet crystal. “You’ve done this before?” “It was done to me,” Nabriales said, “in eras long past. I am familiar with its workings. Are you prepared to return to Mor Dhona?” “No need,” Kallisti said, retrieving her pack. At her feet she cast the sword, the stone, the staff. He bent to collect them with reverence. “You had it all along?” he mused. “Yes,” Kallisti said. “Then you were always the answer, little fool,” he said, tipping her chin up with his fingertips.

The sky was a featureless plain of light; its blanket of clouds diffused the sun to undifferentiated silver. The stone against her back was cold. Kallisti could feel the runes carved into the ancient plinth against her bare skin, subtlest voids in the chilly sensation. Her Crystal of Light—called forth in preparation—rested against her chest, its crimson glow the brightest color in the bleached ruin.

Nabriales put one hand against her cheek. In the other, he held the rectangular prism of white stone. “It’s time,” he said. Kallisti said nothing; there was no need of speech between them now. She lifted her hand to curl her fingers around the cool white stone, and let it leech the heat from her palm. The auracite was a thirsty stone, greedy for her aether in the same way her mage’s staff readily called it forth. But its intent was not to focus her will; no, instead it leeched her aether from her and held it.

The already-dim world grew more distant. The stone’s cold seemed less pressing; the feeling of Nabriales’s clawed gauntlet against her face no longer filled her with smothering warmth. She felt exhausted, as she did after a taxing battle or a number of long-range teleports. It was a familiar sensation; a life in service to the Scions of the Seventh Dawn was neither easy nor comfortable. Kallisti tried to call the sustaining, infusing power of ice, but she could not focus long enough to form the spell. Her hand fell from the stone. Nabriales’s naked face swam in her vision. She reached for him; her grasp fell short. her fingers burned against the black crystal at his throat.

Then she saw no more. The pain wracked her, squeezed her eyes shut. She had so little left to give, and he wrung it from her anyway. She would have called it cruelty, had she the faculty for speech. But she had been robbed of it long since; she was a kernel of self awash in a sea of agony. How easily a candle in the darkness could be snuffed.

Somewhere, far away from here, a knife slipped through her ribs. The last burst of aether from the ritual dagger allowed her sensation enough to feel the blood well and pour, the searing pain of her pierced heart. Hydaelyn’s little fool breathed her last.

Her agony was not ended then; the breath of her soul was the first captured by the staff and channeled back into the crystal. Kallisti felt herself stretched across insurmountable distance, but the aether caused her Crystal of Light to flare still brighter, power welling in its hallowed lattices. She had felt every bit of her being torn apart; she felt every bit of her being put back together, drawn from the auracite prison by the staff and poured back into the Crystal. She was flame and light; she could feel the world dying around her. Mosses and mushrooms that had seen the turning of a thousand years gave up their energy unto her; the chill upon the air and the levinbolts that crackled unborn in the clouds above joined the maelstrom of energies at her heart. Even the Ascian gave up some part of himself, as he had long since done.

In marking his supremacy he had given himself to her.

She did not need to breathe, but gasped all the same. Still the power flowed into her, rising like a spring to the surface, threatening to spill over in a thousand rivers. The Source, she recalled at once. Like its endless waters she flowed back into her body.

Kallisti could exist without it, but the vessel was useful. At the very least, it shielded her from the raw currents of aether that still flowed over her. The auracite was tapped, the staff pumping an empty well; all the energy it could collect had been given unto her.

“Nabriales,” she said, and felt the way his name rippled through the air. He oriented himself toward her—not merely looking with the blinded eyes of his vessel; she could see that now, could truly see him now. Every mote of umbral aether that comprised him reached for her, darkness rising up to meet her light.

Was this what he had felt all along? She no longer concerned herself with cold stone or gelid wind; she cared only for the way the aether flowed. They had deadened this place to make her live, but already the currents were bringing life and energy back to the ruins. She reached out and pressed her hand to his bare face, and watched the way he reacted. Had he been mortal, that simple touch would have made him gasp. But that was a mortal reaction, and so she saw instead the way that his aetherial form bristled, her overwhelming power finding ground in him.

It made her laugh. She stripped him with nothing but a thought, unmaking the simulacrum of his robes so that she could press her skin to his. It felt no longer like a boundary, a membrane between them; it was as ephemeral as a shaft of light or a cast shadow. She could reach into him without effort now, could commingle readily with him.

They were one. Not in the same way they had been one when she had been mortal, where his sensations, his thoughts, his history were hers to explore; they became at last a single entity of radiant light and deepest darkness. An estuary was neither the sea nor the river; it was both, and so were they, until she withdrew.

He was in awe. She did not need to see his expression to know that. “I am of the Source,” she said. He laughed. “I have not forgotten,” he said. He leaned in as though to kiss her, in much the same needy fashion she had lifted her mouth to his once. She felt the kiss as mortal sensation and as a much more immediate touch, and then she felt the rising tide of aether that presaged teleportation.

Elidibus was winter’s darkness, cold to her even at a distance. “What is this?” he said. “You cannot truly have believed this would escape my notice.” “No,” Kallisti told him, drawing her light about her like armor, making of it a shroud against his influence. “But it is too late for you to intervene now.” “What an amusing pet you’ve chosen, Nabriales,” the Emissary said. “Bring her to the palace. Now.”

She could feel the darkness at the heart of the moon—Zodiark slumbered beneath her feet, Nabriales had told her. There was no air to convey the words, but they made themselves understood to one another just the same. It was cold, she noted, in much the same way she noted that the walls around them were tinged with violet. Both facts had become remote to her.

Elidibus seethed, though Kallisti could not yet guess at the cause of that. It could not be that he was angry at being robbed of her, for he was soon joined by his own flickering light. His face was none she knew.

But there were aetherial signatures that were familiar to her—Lahabrea she knew at least a little, and there was another Ascian who seemed familiar somehow, though when she cast herself out to reach him he swiftly rebuffed her. “Who is that?” she asked. “That,” Nabriales said, “is Pashtarot. Why.” “I think we’ve met,” Kallisti said. “Unlikely,” he advised her.

Her concentration was stolen a moment later by a disturbance upon the empty platform to their left. Kallisti could not help but turn her head and watch the shadows coalesce into the last robed figure to arrive—a woman, she realized, with blue hair and a bifurcated mask. She stared a few seconds longer, forcing herself to see past aether that whirled like snowflakes in a winter squall and down to the mere physicality of her. Even so, it was nobody she recognized.

Not so the second figure that appeared a moment later, the third light to flare into existence in this benighted realm. She knew her by face and aether both, for such overwhelming brightness could belong to only one other person.

Lensha Hathaar noticed her staring, and scowled back.

[starcunning]

A slender volume of poetry

FFXIVWrite2019

Thirty days begat thirty entries. The final tally:

X’shasi Kilntreader × Edna St. Vincent Millay: 11 entries

Odette de Dzemael × Marceline Desbordes-Valmore: 5 entries

Caelina Valeria ×  Alexander Pushkin: 3 entries

Zenos yae Galvus × Aleksandr Blok: 3 entries

Emet-Selch × Christopher Marlowe: 2 entries

Aris Greensorrow × Lisa Bellear: 1 entry

Fray Myste × Paul Verlaine: 1 entry

Gaius van Baelsar × Nikolai Nekrasov: 1 entry

Melloria Hathaar × Taliesin the bard: 1 entry

Menelaus × Euripedes: 1 entry

Sidurgu Orl × L. Khuushaan: 1 entry

Indexed below. Also available on AO3.

1. My heart, being hungry ("Voracious") X'shasi Kilntreader (a miqo'te Warrior of Light) & X'moru Tia (a miqo'te adventurer) × "My heart, being hungry, feeds on food" by Edna St. Vincent Millay 

2. With greater wit, or better, wealth ("Bargain") Caelina Valeria (a Garlean Warrior of Light) ♦ Nero Scaeva × "The Bronze Cavalier" by Alexander Pushkin

3. Why should you worship her? Her you surpass ("Lost") Emet-Selch & Warrior of Light; Emet-Selch/Warrior of Light × "Hero and Leander" by Christopher Marlowe An AU where the Fourteenth Councilmember's shade was found upon a reflection and uplifted to their previous station, as befits an Ascian.

4. And to knock at my heart is to beat on my grave ("Shifting Blame") Fray Myste/Odette de Dzemael (an elezen Warrior of Light) × "Parted" by Marceline Desbordes-Valmore

5. A Fear that in the deep night starts awake ("Vault") X'shasi Kilntreader/Baro Llyonesse (a legacy-only miqo'te Warrior of Light); past X'shasi Kilntreader/Haurchefant Greystone × "Interim" by Edna St. Vincent Millay 

6. Go, therefore, like the eye of an angel to awaken his courage ("First Steps") Odette de Dzemael & Colette de Dzemael (an elezen Warrior of Light; Odette's younger twin); Aymeric de Borel/Odette de Dzemael × "The Water Flower" by Marceline Desbordes-Valmore CW: body shaming; fatphobia; narcissistic mothers.

7. returned, to your place of dreaming ("Forgiven") Aris Greensorrow (a viera adventurer) × "Dear Dja Baby Boori" by Lisa Bellear

8. To lay down their reckless heads ("Rencounter"; a free-prompt day) Zenos yae Galvus × "Twelve" by Aleksandr Blok "Shasi sas Intemperatus," an AU where by necessity X'shasi joins forces with Gaius van Baelsar to defeat Lahabrea and is declared Viceroy of Eorzea.

9. Daisies spring from damnèd seeds ("Hesitate") X'shasi Kilntreader ♦ Urianger Augurelt × "Weeds" by Edna St. Vincent Millay

10. Now flooded with moonlight ("Foster") Gaius van Baelsar/Midas nan Garlond × "Who is Happy in Russia?" by Nikolai Nekrasov

11. I breathed my soul back into me ("Snuff") X'shasi Kilntreader/V'jaela Firebird (an Echo-blessed miqo'te adventurer) × "Renascence" by Edna St. Vincent Millay CW: Drug use; breath play; adult content.

12. And not in vain you’ve sent me light ("Fingers Crossed") Caelina Valeria ♦ Nero Scaeva × "Angel" by Alexander Pushkin

13. We shall die apart, shall we not? That is what you wanted! ("Wax") Odette de Dzemael & Colette de Dzemael; past Fray Myste/Odette de Dzemael × "Elegy (You, who have taken all)" by Marceline Desbordes-Valmore

14. Who will measure Uffern? ("Scour") Melloria Hathaar (a miqo'te Warrior of Light) × "The First Address of Taliesin" by Taliesin the bard

15. To be flame in the heat ("Travail"; a free-prompt day) Sidurgu Orl/Warrior of Light × "It's an Honour to be Human" by L. Khuushaan A roleswap AU where Fray lives and Sid dies, becoming the player's Dark Knight mentor.

16. And find me at dawn in a desolate place ("Jitter") X'shasi Kilntreader & Regula van Hydrus × "Departure" by Edna St. Vincent Millay

17. Brought to earth the arrogant brow ("Obeisant") X'shasi Silverhair (an Echo-blessed miqo'te adventurer who is not yet the Warrior of Light) × "Dirge" by Edna St. Vincent Millay

18. You're gone away, and I'm in desert ("Wilt") X'shasi Kilntreader/Zenos yae Galvus × "You're Gone Away" by Aleksandr Blok

19. And we will all the pleasures prove ("Radiant") "Solus zos Galvus"/Aquila jen Novius (a Garlean engineer who will later incarnate as Caelina Valeria) × "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" by Christopher Marlowe

20. Thy mark is on me! I am not the same ("Bisect") X'shasi Kilntreader × "The Suicide" by Edna St. Vincent Millay

21. Your other sister and my other soul ("Crunch") X'shasi Kilntreader & "Minfilia" (Ryne Waters) × "Ode to Silence" by Edna St. Vincent Millay

22. This red gown will make a shroud ("Detritus"; a free-prompt day) X'shasi Kilntreader & Fray Myste × "The Shroud" by Edna St. Vincent Millay An AU where the mysterious voice heard beginning in "Prelude in Violet" belongs to a different benefactor: one who allows the Warrior of Light to rewrite history.

23. And where her glances fall, there cities burn ("Parched") Menelaus (an Ancient and member of the Convocation of Fourteen who will one day incarnate as X'shasi Kilntreader) × "Helen" by Euripedes

24. A look all veiled in blue ("Unctuous") Aymeric de Borel/Odette de Dzemael × "Flower of Childhood" by Marceline Desbordes-Valmore

25. I knew her for a little ghost ("Trust") X'shasi Kilntreader & Lensha Hathaar (a legacy miqo'te Warrior of Light from a timeline where she failed in her duties) × "The Little Ghost" by Edna St. Vincent Millay

26. And all have gone to sea in the wind ("Slosh") Carvallain de Gorgagne/Odette de Dzemael × "The Roses of Saadi" by Marceline Desbordes-Valmore

27. The easy shadow of night is softly laid ("Palaver") Emet-Selch/Caelina Valeria × "Remembrance" by Alexander Pushkin

28. My needle to your north abruptly swerved ("Attune") X'shasi Kilntreader/Baro Llyonesse × "Sonnet III (No lack of counsel)" by Edna St. Vincent Millay

29. To live again, undying! Aye ("Deleterious"; a free-prompt day) Fray Myste × "Last Hope" by Paul Verlaine Archive Warning: Major character death.

30. And You're afar—but are you real there? ("Darkness") Zenos yae Galvus & Estinien Wyrmblood × "I seek salvation" by Aleksandr Blok

[starcunning]

Drasteria adumbrata

Happy birthday to my very favorite Leo/Virgo cusp.

Oh, you thought we were done? We might actually be less done than before.

[M/F] [WOL* (Kallisti)/Nabriales][G-rated Fluff][ARR 2.56][Shadowbringers spoilers][Erebidae][4k words]

[AO3 mirror]

The air in the cave was gelid. That might have been a problem once, long ago, but Kallisti had passed beyond such concerns in the moors of Yafaem. There was a stillness to the aether, too; much of it was likely bound up in the summoning of Saint Shiva.

That might have been a problem she was expected to address once, but to slay that false goddess would have seen Kallisti turned out from the shelter of the Warrens. She had been accepted among Iceheart’s heretics only by Nabriales’s insistence, being otherwise too recognizable a figure. And being still wanted for regicide, there was little to be done but shelter among the ice and snow while Nabriales and Igeyorhm directed events.

Soon enough, she had been assured, it would not really matter what she was accused of.

It was evening, and the wind whipped her indifferent cheeks as she strained to catch the last rays of the sun. The heavy blanket of clouds overhead dampened the sunset to something almost unrecognizable, but she did not turn her head as she felt the displacement of aether that presaged teleportation.

“Your work is done for the day?” she asked. The wordless affirmation was felt rather than heard, but Nabriales nodded. “What are you doing?” he asked after a moment. “Trying to remember what daylight looks like,” Kallisti replied. “It’s so cold here.” “You do suffer so, don’t you,” he said, tone dripping with false sweetness. “Things are drawing to a close.” “We should go to Costa del Sol,” she said. “If there’s time.” The non-sequitur seemed to confuse him. “You want to take a vacation?” “It will be time for a Calamity soon, won’t it?” Kallisti wondered. “That’s why you’re doing all this? The last one changed things significantly. It seems a shame not to enjoy it while it lasts.” Nabriales pursed his lips beneath the rim of his mask. For a moment she thought he might refuse, but when he spoke, he said, “There is another place we should visit before the Ardor. It will not survive the Rejoining, and it is past time you were illuminated on certain matters.” “My schedule is clear,” she said.

Nabriales extended one hand. The claws of his gauntlets glittered like ice in the dim light, but when she put her palm in his she was surprised to find he was as warm as ever. He drew her in, enfolding her in his own aether, his darkness blotting out her vision. She closed her eyes and leaned in against him, reaching out with her senses to feel him—not just the cloak of shadow wound around her like clouds around the moon, but the core of dark crystal at his heart. She felt it distantly, through her body and his, but focused upon it as she had learned to do when he had brought her to the Chrysalis.

She did not think they were headed there now, but dared not speculate on what might be so important to him that he would derelict his duties for it. It was easier to travel with an empty head in any case, so she focused only on the sound of her own breathing, and did not allow it to hitch as the teleportation hooked into her gut and reeled her along. It seemed to last a long time—longer than she was accustomed to, and when she felt earth beneath her feet once more it took her a moment to get her bearings.

They stood upon a stony beach—white rocks about the size of her fist dappled the shoreline. The water was clear blue, the waves dappled with golden light. Kallisti adjusted the brim of her hat, turning in a slow circle, but found no sun sinking upon the horizon. Against her better judgement she glanced up, expecting to find it at its zenith, but the firmament overhead was undifferentiated light—equal but opposite, in its way, to the clouds that blanketed Coerthas where she had stood but moments before.

She turned back to Nabriales, thinking to put the question to him, but he was cringing beneath the brilliant sky. Instead she asked, “What’s wrong?” “The Light,” he said. “It is anathema to us. Beneath the water is better, I’m told.” Then he was off, wading into the surf, Kallisti’s hand still in his own. “Where are we going?” “The Caliban Trench,” he replied. “To the last place the Light does not touch.”

He seemed eager to get there, already submerged to the waist. Kallisti’s robes billowed around her, the waves lapping at her chest. With her free hand she clutched at her hat.

“Nabriales,” she said, drawing him up short. He turned back to look at her, seeming baffled by her hesitation. “I still need to breathe.” “You had no such need when we visited the Chrysalis,” he pointed out. Her ears brushed the brim of her hat, laying back. “Why would the air of the Chrysalis be unsuitable?” she wondered. He grinned. “The moon you are all so keen to worship as a goddess is more like Dalamud than you think. It, too, serves as a prison, and at its heart slumbers Zodiark. The Chrysalis is as near as we are allowed to His presence.” She squinted, not merely at the brightness of the sky, but at him. “The Chrysalis is on the moon?” “In, rather, in much the same way the Sharlayan Antitower penetrates to the heart of the star, unto the borders of Hydaelyn’s influence,” Nabriales said. “Antitower?” she echoed. “What? I think I would have heard of it.” The Ascian’s smile broadened: “There is much that was kept from you,” he said. “The secrets of Sharlayan not least of all.” A wave broke upon his back, and he took a step closer to her. “I still don’t think I can do it,” she said. Nabriales merely shrugged, and then reached up to take her by the throat. With exacting delicacy he put the claw of his other forefinger to the side of her neck. She felt her pulse leap and then settle—surely the Echo would warn her somehow if she were in mortal danger.

Not that it would save her, she could not help but reflect. After all, Laurentius Daye had had her dead to rights, as Nabriales did then.

She could feel her blood trickle over her skin as he opened a slash in the side of her neck, so delicate as to be almost painless until the sea spray hit it, and then salt seared the wound. He turned her head by force, repeating the gesture on the other side. He reached into her, then, his aether commingling with hers and felt herself rearranged—not in the same way that Lensha might have done, straightening and reinforcing in the service of healing, but in a way that left her transmogrified thereafter. Her neck tensed, and new muscles flared—her gills gaped, for that was what he had opened in the sides of her neck. She pressed her hand to his, feeling the edge, and then dove past him into the water. The drag of the water tore her hat from her head, but she abandoned it, reveling instead in the coolness that suffused her.

The light that permeated did not warm, but it was altogether more temperate than had been Coerthas—it did not seem to be winter here at all. As Nabriales caught up with her and they broke from the surface, threading through forests of seaweed, she recalled the question that had struck her first when she arrived, forestalled by the sight of him in pain. He seemed relaxed—even content—then, so she opened her mouth to ask the question. It came out in a rush of bubbles, and she felt water fill her lungs.

When it had finished—and she could walk along the seabed—she repeated the question. “What is this place?” “This is the First Reflection,” he said. “Mitron and Loghrif had primed it for Rejoining before they … retired from this place. When we trigger the Ardor upon our return, it will be reabsorbed into the Source.” “It looked a lot like La Noscea,” Kallisti noted. “Functionally, it is,” he replied. “I was born not far from here,” he said, “albeit on a different Reflection.” “The Twelfth,” she said, remembering distant Dravania. “Do not ask to see it,” he said. “It was Rejoined shortly after I was uplifted, some time after the Thirteenth collapsed.” “Do you miss it?” she wondered. “Do you never wish to go home?” “Where do you think I am taking you?” he wondered, his lips quirking in a crooked smile.

He led her then to a place where the current swept out to sea, and they let it carry them—past the shelf break, and they sunk to the slope. The water dimmed much of the light overhead, everything dimmed to a murky green that reminded her, almost, of home. Their passing startled schools of fish, and once a coterie of Sahagin drew near, but Nabriales’s sigil flared over his mask, and they dared no closer. Soon, however, they came upon it.

There was a vast ruin beneath the sea, in a trench that opened before them. Its structures were in ruin, shattered glass in broken tracery, spires of corroded metal stretching upward toward a surface they would never reach. Even broken, she could see its grandeur.

“What is this?” she asked. Something stirred in her breast—some half-forgotten dream of a memory not her own. Was it his? “This was Amaurot,” Nabriales said. “The original Nabriales was born there.” Her brow knit, and she looked from the city to his masked face and back. He reached out with his empty hand. A moment later her hat settled upon the crown of her head. She tugged it into place, ears swiveling and flicking to settle it correctly. “Shall we go down there?” he asked.

He awaited no answer, only stepped from the ledge. His robes billowed around him in the water as he sank. Kallisti clutched the brim of her hat and stepped after him. There was a walkway below, but it had crumbled into dozens of rough-hewn boulders. Still, when she touched down upon it, her feet met level ground, and she looked down to find the stone underfoot smooth and unbroken, graven with an elegant, regular zig-zag pattern. Nabriales offered her one gloved hand, and she took it, careful of his claws.

She could see fish and other creatures among the ruins, flitting through the water or peeking from the crevices. Still, for a bubble several yalms wide around the pair, the stone was repaired; the facades of the buildings gleamed; even grass and trees grew in the wells in the stone. Looking back at the way they had come, however, left no trace of their passage.

“What did you mean, ‘the original Nabriales?’” she wondered. “Oh, little fool,” he laughed. “Your mothercrystal would not have told you. Before She sundered the world, there was but one race of man, and we lived free of worry or need. We were ageless beings, and given to us was the power of creation. Nabriales is not a name, but a title, and we lived here, in Amaurot.” “Your name,” she said, tail twitching sluggishly behind her, “is not Nabriales?” “No,” he said, as though this were obvious. He led her from the walkway up to one of the buildings. In one instant it was all but collapsed, the door sagging from the hinges; in the next it was pristine, lamps casting cones of light up the white marble facade. The door was heavy and paneled in bronze, and when he pushed it open they stepped into an atrium of golden yellow stone with bronze pilasters. The floor underfoot was inlaid with contrasting cream and deep brown stone. These too were bounded by gleaming metal. “So what was it?” she asked, approaching one of the empty benches there, wrought on a scale rather too broad for her. “I had thought you might like to know your own name,” he said. “You were Eris.” “We knew each other?” she said, reaching out to touch the lacquered wood. It was cold, but solid and real. “Were we lovers?” He laughed softly—not the triumphant sound she had grown so accustomed to, but something gentler, more intimate. “No,” he said. He reached out to curl his hand around her throat, tipping her chin upward. Her gaze lingered on the chandelier there, its milky glass and metal inlays reminding her of the nautilus shell motif of Sharlayan. “Who were you to me?” she asked softly. “We were rivals,” he said. “Of a kind. My colleagues and I were members of the Convocation of Fourteen, and you … were always bringing a dissenting opinion to our public addresses. Debate was something of a pastime in Amaurot, so none of us really minded. Elidibus,” he said, his tone souring, “was quite amused, actually.” “There are fourteen Ascians?” she mused. “I had assumed one for each shard, plus the Source, so wouldn’t that be fifteen?” Again his laughter sounded in her ear. “We were not Fourteen when Zodiark was made,” he said. “One of our number left after his wife, Helen, departed for one of the cities already in the grip of that first primordial calamity, which we summoned Zodiark to halt.”

“And it was her fault,” came another voice. Kallisti whipped around, her robes swirling in the water. She regarded the newcomer, and was surprised to note that he was Garlean, of all things. He wore no robes and no mask, but a dress uniform heavy with medals. He looked at her for a moment, then scoffed and snapped his fingers. The room changed around them, the details of the mosaic refining into sharper clarity. “Really, Nabriales,” he said, “stick to what you’re best at.” “What is that?” Kallisti wondered, head canting beneath the brim of her hat. “Supercilious self-aggrandizement,” the man said. “‘The Majestic.’ Well. It certainly was not architecture—and not recruitment. Do you even recall the trouble you caused, Eris?” “You knew me too,” Kallisti said, blinking in fascination. Nabriales shifted his weight, interposing himself between the pair. “Emet-Selch is of our number,” he said to her, then turned his face forward. There was a tension in his posture. “Why are you here?” “You are not subtle,” Emet-Selch said, rolling his golden eyes. “I am steward of this shard until it is rejoined, since I have no need of my mortal guise, and its original tenders sacrificed themselves to prime it. But why are you here?” “To show her the city,” Nabriales replied. “It is her birthright, which Hydaelyn has kept from her.” “Mmm,” Emet-Selch temporized. “No. I suppose, being born to the Source, she might have better claim than you, pale shade that you are. What did you think? That she might become the new Mitron? Igeyorhm has already asked me to consider elevating her half-formed pet to Loghrif’s station. But she is no Ebrietas, and this is no Eris.” “She is as much Eris as I am Nereus,” Nabriales—Nereus?—said with quiet vehemence. Emet-Selch laughed, though it sounded deadened in the water. “She actually is more Eris than that,” he pointed out. “But she is not Mitron, much as you might like to dream of her filling the seas with new life. When this shard is rejoined, we will go and find a proper Mitron. Eris was the one responsible for Menelaus’s departure from the council; it is not just that she should sit among us like she was fit to govern.” “That is Elidibus’s decision to make, not yours,” Nabriales said. “Oh, so his authority is at your convenience. I cannot imagine Lahabrea will speak for Ebrietas, and I certainly will not speak for Eris. Really, what will you do when you are denied?” Emet-Selch asked. “Put your head underwater and scream? You are already here, so I will leave you to it. Do remember,” he said, “that if things go poorly on the Source because you could not attend to the simple tasks you were given, we know exactly where to find the next Nabriales.”

It was a threat, Kallisti grasped instinctively, though she could not exactly put what it meant into words. Nabriales bristled, stepping further in front of her, blocking her view of the room beyond. When she looked to peer around him, Emet-Selch was gone. “Are you alright?” she asked. The new name felt strange upon her tongue, but she forced it over her lips just the same. “Nereus?” “He does love the sound of his own voice, doesn’t he,” the Ascian said. “Why do you remember this place and I don’t?” Kallisti wondered. “Because I was ascended, and while I can unmoor you from your mortality I cannot do that. That is reserved to Ascians of the Source—their souls are more complete and their powers greater. It is why you are stronger than me, when you remember how to be.”

She thought about that a moment, and then she pulled herself up onto one of the too-large benches, settling there with a sigh. “Elidibus knew,” she decided after a moment. “I have to assume so,” Nabriales agreed, materializing beside her. Kallisti leaned against him, letting his aether wash over her, much warmer than the seawater around them. “Who is Ebrietas?” she wondered. “She was Igeyorhm’s partner. She was not part of the Convocation.” “No, I mean, who is she now?” “Guess,” Nabriales laughed. “Who have you seen in Igeyorhm’s company of late?” “Wait, Lensha?” she said, sputtering. “The very same,” Nabriales confirmed. “She was of the faction that departed with Menelaus.”

“Who’s Menelaus?” Kallisti wondered. “I guess it would have to be Arenvald; he’s the only male Echo-blessed I can think of.” Nabriales shook his head. “We don’t always come back the same,” he said. “The other shard of Nabriales they have waiting in the wings should I ever require replacement is—you would recognize her as a Xaela Au Ra, though she would call herself something else. Menelaus could have incarnated as a woman. He has before, in eras past. But his last incarnation was shortly before the Sixth Ardor, known to you as the Calamity of Water. He usually does come back just as conditions are becoming ripe for a rejoining.” “So he could be Minfilia.” “He could, but he is not,” Nabriales said. “His absence has made us bold, it’s true; we would not have primed another shard so quickly, were he here to stand against us.”

“Why did he leave?” “He departed the council because he objected to our plans to halt the destruction of our very star. In pursuit of his wife he visited the cities across the sea, and was disturbed by what he saw there. That should have strengthened his convictions; instead it made him doubt. It is he that created Hydaelyn.” “Created Hydaelyn?” Kallisti sat upright. “And you summoned Zodiark … but that would make them …” “At last you see, little fool,” he murmured, pulling her in to press his lips to her forehead. “Your goddess is the very thing you sought to destroy. What did you think Her blessing was, to protect you from tempering? Only the very same thing.”

Kallisti closed her eyes, but found little comfort in his embrace. She slipped from his grasp, and made for the door of the room, which now seemed much too close, for all it was vast. Nabriales followed after, his restorative bubble recreating the stoop out front. She left the door open as she withdrew, until they stood in the middle of a grassy plaza, the bounds of the Ascian’s influence clearly visible.

Beyond them—past the crumbling rim of their circle—the door to the building hung open, not returned to its crumbling state. She could see the gleaming metal inlaid upon the floor within, and the warm light of the chandelier spilled out into the ruin. A school of fish swam through the shaft of light, glittering, and darted into the chamber. She waited for it to decay; to crumble back to metal skeleton and shattered rock, but it did not. It stood, unchanging, and she stood facing it, feeling unexpectedly defiant.

“If you were to revive Zodiark,” Kallisti said softly, still staring into that open door, “what would you do?” “We would restore things to how they used to be in our time. Part of this would happen automatically—when the sundered souls come together—but we would use the powers of creation restored to us to recreate the rest.” “As Emet-Selch remade that room,” she said after a moment. “I am surprised he stopped there,” Nabriales admitted. “He is fond of gilding the lily.” “And nothing would ever change again,” Kallisti asked, not quite a question. Nabriales shook his head. “Life … would continue, of course; children would be born and new concepts would be developed and refined, but the ideal is a complete existence in a perfect world.” “I thought you were bringers of chaos.” Kallisti scoffed. “But really, you’re more bound to order than anyone.” He laughed, turning to embrace her, his clawed gloves pressed to her cheeks. “You sound just like you did then,” he said. “You were never happy here.”

She watched the ebb and flow of water through the city—invisible to mortal sight, but her aetherial senses were awakened to the subtlest change. Fish swam through the ruins, and some few creatures crept toward the open door, drawn toward the light that spilled out into the street. None dared approach the pair, skirting the bubble of restoration. They might have, Kallisti assumed. There was no barrier that separated the two of them from the vast seas. They were merely discomforted by the sudden change in the environment.

So too was she.

“I don’t want this,” she said after a while. “I don’t want to suffocate under rules or tempering.” “I wonder,” Nabriales said, “were I made whole, and none could dispute that I owned the name ‘Nereus,’ would you remember me?” His expression was half screened away by the mask, but the way he pursed his lips betrayed some discomfort with the question. “I don’t know,” she said. “Well,” he murmured. “We need not worry on that now. What strictures bind you we can find a way for you to slip. You were not of Her party when She was made. She has little hope of keeping you under Her thumb.” “I am worried now,” Kallisti insisted. “If this city is my birthright, I want to abdicate. Would you choose me over this?” She reached for him, skimming her hands over his chest until she cupped his head between her palms, and put her thumbs to him to pry away the mask. It dissolved at her touch, and his dark eyes fixed on her. “Yes,” he said. “Then …” She paused, trying to organize her thoughts. “I don’t want to be Eris, and don’t really want you to be Nereus. Let them ascend the other Nabriales in your stead.” “You’re asking me to run away with you?” “Yes!” Kallisti said. “I think so.” “Where will we go?” “I don’t know!” she laughed. “Where do dragons come from? Meracydia, sure, but Lensha told me they were from somewhere else before that.” “True,” the Ascian said. “They arrived after the sundering of the shards, and none of the reflections have them.” “Then we have a destination,” Kallisti said.

He leaned down to kiss her, the warmth of him smothering in the cold, deep water. Something occurred to her, then. “If you’re giving up your title and your ancient name … what do I call you?” “My name before I was ascended …” He paused, seeming to think about it a long time. “It was … it was Brett.” “Hi, Brett,” she said, giggling. Then she said, “Do you think we have time to visit Costa del Sol before we leave?”

[starcunning]

[4:35 p.m.][FC]<V'jaela Firebird> hey star [4:35 p.m.][FC]<X'shasi Kilntreader> hey [4:35 p.m.][FC]<V'jaela Firebird> do that trust npc meme for me [4:35 p.m.][FC]<X'shasi Kilntreader> okay [4:35 p.m.][FC]<X'shasi Kilntreader> lensha // TRUST NPC [4:36 p.m.][FC]<X'shasi Kilntreader> lensha lets you die, because nothing matters. [4:36 p.m.][FC]<V'jaela Firebird> LOL [4:36 p.m.][FC]<Libby Firebird> i dont get it [4:36 p.m.][FC]<V'jaela Firebird> seems canon [4:36 p.m.][FC]<Libby Firebird> do me next [4:36 p.m.][FC]<V'jaela Firebird> there's a thing on tumblr where people are doing a write-up of what their toons would be like as a trust npc [4:36 p.m.][FC]<X'shasi Kilntreader> Libby Firebird // TRUST NPC [4:37 p.m.][FC]<X'shasi Kilntreader> It's safe to follow Libby because she knows where all the safe spots in fights are. She will make the player her dance partner if they are a tank or melee DPS, but will prioritize a melee trust over either. She usually defers on LB. [4:38 p.m.][FC]<Libby Firebird> :D [4:38 p.m.][FC]<V'jaela Firebird> canon [4:38 p.m.][FC]<V'jaela Firebird> bonus: if you have godly skillspeed she will make you her dance parter regardless of job [4:38 p.m.][FC]<X'shasi Kilntreader> lmao [4:38 p.m.][FC]<X'shasi Kilntreader> yueah [4:39 p.m.][FC]<Libby Firebird> saber dance makes he hard dont judge

[starcunning]

Notes to Selves

... and sometimes, after you pull teeth for a week, you get something, anyway.

Shasi has never spent the night before a battle with someone she loved. Until now.

This story contains MSQ spoilers for FFXIV Patch 4.4, “Prelude in Violet,” and 4.5, “Requiem for Heroes.”

12th Sun of Nophica’s Moon

Windsday.

You will not write anything today because you would rather forget all that has transpired. You want to forget the sight of him crumpling to the floor, a greater agony than that which passed before. Committing it to paper would make it real, and you cannot allow that now.

I am here, real as everything you reject. I will remember for you, to spare you the pain of forgetting later. —F

14th Sun of Nophica’s Moon

Lightningday.

You never got out of bed yesterday. Today you roused yourself only to meet with the Seedseer. She cannot feel his soul. I write this for you not because I think you will forget, but because you cannot bear to write it for yourself.

We were doing so well. —F

15th Sun of Nophica’s Moon

Lightsday.

En route to Revenant’s Toll to seek Augurelt’s counsel. A reliable source before; occasionally a comfort. Questions to consider:

- What news of the First?

- Thancred’s previous exposure to Ascian influence a factor?

- Why not Lyse?

Slender hope of answers. World ever turns on such slender hopes.

17th Sun of Nophica’s Moon

Darksday. Full moon.

Arrived at Rising Stones late yesterday. Early start to the morning in hopes situation would be swiftly resolved. Augurelt joined us just before noon. Another vision; situation compounded. Rhul and Augurelt now added to the list of incapacitated. Thancred to be transferred from Ala Mhigo to Mor Dhona.

18th Sun of Nophica’s Moon

Firesday.

May as well keep them all in one place.

Shpoki left the Rising Stones yesterday, and you let her. We know that move, don’t we? Break and run before anyone sees we’re upset? Today we wrote a letter to Matoya. We wrote three letters. You didn’t like any of them enough to send. We’ll try again tomorrow. —F

22nd Sun of Nophica’s Moon

Lightningday.

Sent letters to Master Matoya; Y’mhitra Rhul; the Forum of Sharlayan. No kin to contact for Augurelt or Waters. Overtures are being made to the Alchemists’ Guild and Prioress Dewla. Heard an interesting rumor about the fate of Heartstrike recently. Considering purchasing information from the Dutiful Sisters. Scions’ coffers empty. Personal funds in good shape.

24th Sun of Nophica’s Moon

Darksday.

Arya is talking about going looking for X’rhun. You think she hopes this is something he can solve, like the problem of the Nightkin. You hadn’t considered that, but thinking about it made you recall your dealings with Ishgardian orthodoxy in that pursuit.

Haldrath never decayed either, did he? —F

31st Sun of Nophica’s Moon

Darksday.

You took your bracelet off for a week, locked the stone it held in a drawer, tried not to think of me. You are telling yourself it is about the journals. It isn’t, is it? You are angry I have no answers for you. I wish I did.

You thought of me in my exile, and wondered if you had killed me. That isn’t how it works, is it? I cannot live without you, but my death is temporary. And some shade of me lingers with you still. You can still hear me scream inside your skull even when you cast me into the dark and curse my name for not doing enough.

Nobody hears you screaming. —F

1st Sun of Althyk’s Moon

Firesday. New Moon.

Arya departed yesterday. Alisaie thusly deprived of closest companionship. Fond of her as I am, our closeness is not without difficulty in these circumstances.

2nd Sun of Althyk’s Moon

Earthsday.

Which is worse: not to know what has become of someone you love, or to be certain of their ill fate?

5th Sun of Althyk’s Moon

Iceday.

Traveled to Ul’dah to meet with Prioress Dewla. Nothing. Returned home to the Goblet. Should be in Mor Dhona. Letter awaited me at the house from the Sisters, who have heard of no artifact with such effects as was described.

6th Sun of Althyk’s Moon

Lightningday.

When you wake screaming in the night, it is only us you awaken. You tell yourself this is preferable.

Alisaie reminds me of Rielle. —F

7th Sun of Althyk’s Moon

Lightsday.

Meeting today with Captain Firebird. She is already apprised of the news. Thancred counted her a personal friend. I do not know what aid she can offer, but determined to explore all avenues.

10th Sun of Althyk’s Moon

Earthsday.

Departed Ul’dah for Ala Mhigo. While in Ul’dah was elevated to Flame Captain. Poor consolation prize. Firebird is alright; sympathetic ear. Am come to collect the research notes of Aulus mal Asina.

12th Sun of Althyk’s Moon

Windsday.

Yesterday you sat in Thancred’s apartment trying to make sense of the Medicus’s notes. At sunset you went into the city, and stood there in the place where he ripped your soul from your body, and tried to recall how it was you put yourself back together.

It didn’t hurt half so much when he did it. You walked from his laboratory to the room where the Alliance all met, and you thought about being torn apart, self from self. You thought about the voice and the words and the fear and the pain.

The fear and the pain that were Thancred’s last moments in this world before he was severed from himself. You would have given anything to spare him that. Would that I could have told you how. Would that I could tell you anything now.

You would trade your place with any of them. That is your nature. The thing you are afraid to admit to yourself is that you would trade me for them, too. You are angry with me. You are right to be angry. I am here. —F

13th Sun of Althyk’s Moon

Iceday.

You went to the Menagerie today. Why did you go there? This is a rhetorical question. It hurt you to stand there, in the wan winter sun, and listen to the wind blow through bare trees. Every step you took on cobbles you once stained with blood drove knives into your heart. You are suffering, so you sought out suffering.

You stood in the dry grass, and reached for your linkpearl, thinking: if you call Urianger, he’ll help you figure this out. Urianger has always helped you figure it out.

Thancred’s loss you never forget. It is a black moon that eclipses the terrible light of the others’ stillness and silence. You hated yourself then for forgetting. It was a moment��s lapse, and you will bear the guilt for a long, long time.

Instants become eons. —F

14th Sun of Althyk’s Moon

Lightningday.

The others are come to Ala Mhigo, though they have little to report. Shpoki tells me Y’mhitra has arrived; has enlisted the aid of the Sons of Saint Coinach to research her sister’s condition and that of the others. Sophronia mentioned that she and Alisaie get along; there is a small relief in that. One worries.

Spent the early evening in a game of Sink—one of Shpoki’s devising, last played on the banks of the Thaliak. Alone then too, or at least without him. Sank any number of things, though not my troubles. Figure emerged from the Lochs thereafter; four of us were sufficient to subdue it. Proof remitted to Clan Centurio.

Depart Ala Mhigo tomorrow in the company of Lensha Hathaar, who has been aiding Garlond Ironworks in some project.

19th Sun of Althyk’s Moon

Watersday.

Ironworks has experienced a similar thinning of ranks; tol Scaeva incapacitated in the course of this project, along with engineers Biggs and Wedge. Conscious, however; unlikely to have succumbed to the same pernicious influence as felled the Scions.

Garlond thinks of Bojza often. Reviews the data in anticipation of some new project. Scaeva takes ill to bed-rest. Keeps offering to replace my sword with one more befitting “an adventurer of my caliber.”

Not sure whether he intends to replace Fray’s blade or Zenos’s. In either case, uninterested.

25th Sun of Althyk’s Moon

Firesday.

Who is Lensha Hathaar? Claims to have been a longtime member of the Scions; Shpoki claims to have found her at her apartment. Assuming she means the one abutting the Hanging Cat. Skeptical of any recruit we find in a bar; nevertheless shows promise.

Starlight Celebration ongoing. Some mail finds me in Gyr Abania—cards; wellwishes; etc. Wish it did not.

31st Sun of Althyk’s Moon

Lightsday.

Last day of Starlight. Glad when it’s over.

I didn’t get you anything.

1st Sun of Halone’s Moon

Firesday. New moon.

I didn’t get you anything either. —F

6th Sun of Halone’s Moon

Lightningday.

Brief recess from duties with Hathaar in Gyr Abania. Returned to Ul’dah to fulfill charitable obligation. Raising funds for the arts in Ul’dah. Bought a foolish number of candles. Sophronia materialized halfway through the evening; followed me home.

Seems to think all this pain is worthwhile for having gotten to learn the taste of chocolate. I do not think he understands.

7th Sun of Halone’s Moon

Lightsday.

How can he? He has lived this life for a handful of months at most. You have carried this for six years. You are certain there is no one yet he loves, but how can you be sure? He is fond of you, or are you pretending to ignore that? —F

12th Sun of Halone’s Moon

Windsday.

It does not matter who is fond of me. To seek comfort without Thancred’s knowledge is betrayal unforgivable, and unworthy of us both.

Returned to Gyr Abania. Midgardsormr seemed familiar with Hathaar. No answers to be found, for the elder dragon now slumbers. Not the same sickness as plagued the Scions. Nevertheless, our allies fall away, one by one.

14th Sun of Halone’s Moon

Lightningday.

But our obligations persist. Received call from Tataru that I am needed at Reisen Temple. The Firebird elected to accompany me. Her interest in Suzaku is personal, given the imagery of her epithet. As she is afflicted with the same blessings as I, this shall be allowed.

It is the smallest repayment of her kindness to me as host whilst in Ul’dah.

16th Sun of Halone’s Moon

Darksday.

You and the Firebird went to the temple yesterday to quell the Aramitama of the auspice Suzaku. A fair number of words new to my travels with you there. Nevertheless, the concepts are familiar: a Darkside untempered ever threatens to destroy.

Hers was not the rage of Byakko but an untempered grief. One thinks of these things as a dark ocean, a vast plain of ink, but a single drop breaks the surface and bestirs a tempest. So too with the firebird—your presence was a potent reminder of all she had lost.

As hers was to you.

Her lover perished in the fires of self-sacrifice. It is an end I can see for you all too easily. You would mourn your dead for centuries, I think, were you allowed the opportunity. For all that I have come to carry your burdens, you have not put aside the pain of loss wholly.

Not that I think you ever will. Or should, for that matter. It was no exaggeration when I told you that there was never another like you, nor shall there be. Part of that is your reserve of aether—what another might call determination, or force of soul. Part of that is the scope of your suffering.

It is a hard thing to celebrate, so I will not ask you to. —F

18th Sun of Halone’s Moon

Earthsday.

Dinner last night with van Hydrus’s widow. Did not expect Garlemald to have any knowledge of like situations, and indeed they did not. Hope her discretion is trustworthy, else fear the consequences of letting an Imperial citizen know of the Scions’ compromised strength.

19th Sun of Halone’s Moon

Watersday

Krile is returned to Kugane from the expedition; seems of hearty disposition. She has not heard the voice nor felt the call—curious oversight. Wondering about Alphinaud. No word from him since investigating the Burn several months ago.

21st Sun of Halone’s Moon

Iceheart. Returned with Krile to Mor Dhona. Firebird is resuming her regular duties. Alisaie and Krile agreed it past time we called upon Master Matoya. Rising early tomorrow to depart.

22nd Sun of Halone’s Moon

Lightningday.

All lives severed. No trail to follow. Felt the call again; Krile too. Word comes from Ala Mhigo that Populares defectors have arrived there.

23rd Sun of Halone’s Moon

Lightsday.

The palace, again; the same room. Maxima quo Priscus waiting. Took his leave of Alphinaud months ago, brought defectors and news. Imperials using Black Rose again. Thought that weapon lost.

No weapon against us is ever lost.

24th Sun of Halone’s Moon

Darksday. Back to Doma and Lord Hien, bringing word of Imperial invasion. Problem of Doman security remains. Ironworks offers a solution in the form of energy barrier like unto that which secluded Azys Lla.

One thinks of Ysayle’s sacrifice, and of the late van Hydrus. One thinks of Bojza and the barrier Garlond birthed from his father’s data.

When all is in readiness we go to the Burn.

28th Sun of Halone’s Moon

Windsday.

Gaius van Baelsar lives. Alphinaud sleeps.

4th Sun of Menphina’s Moon

Watersday.

Arya called you when you returned from the poor aether of the Burn, and you spoke to X’rhun. You told him to come to Ala Mhigo if he meant to fight for it, for this may be his last opportunity. You have thought much and not at all of what Gaius Baelsar told you upon those white sands.

He claims to have destroyed the stores and the production facilities for Black Rose, and told you it was Zenos yae Galvus who signed the order for its making. We know the truth, don’t we? Your enemy wears your lover’s face. Again.

Your pain is so close to the surface. You think they can look at you and see me behind your eyes. What would they see if I were not here to be you when you cannot?

Something’s up with Hathaar and Baelsar, by the way. —F

6th Sun of Menphina’s Moon

Lightningsday.

Porta Praetoria. We march northeast with Lord Hien and what few Domans could make the aetherial journey. There is a warcamp. We are outmatched. The plan is this: parley and stall for time and reinforcements.

8th Sun of Menphina’s Moon

Darksday.

“Sun” bears no meaning here, as no light reaches this place. You have felt the thinness of aether in the world everywhere you have walked. It reminds you of Carteneau. Everything about this reminds you of Carteneau: the massing Imperials, the oppressive weight of the sky overhead.

You think of your mother and how she died on that plain. How your whole world was destroyed not just in the Calamity, but in its legacy.

The others are arriving at camp, slowly. Sophronia came with Lyse Hext; Shpoki and Hathaar have been with you all along. The Tumet lad came, too. Such a bright face in this terrible darkness; you think you will not forgive yourself for bringing him here.

Alisaie is glad to be reunited with Arya and X’rhun. You feel a pang of envy at that, don’t you? You refuse to put a name to it—you whose mother is dead and whose father is not your father.

You’ll figure it out sooner or later.

Speaking of fathers, it’s Zenos’s who will sit across the table from you. Your request for parley has been granted, two days hence. Tomorrow you and Shpoki will go and prepare the site.

10th Sun of Menphina’s Moon

Earthsday.

Surprises at the table.

Not how poorly it went—you were ready for that, eager for that, even if you left your sword behind so you could pretend you weren’t. You brought an Imperial defector into that room with you—and Sophronia’s not the only one of your companions with a grudge.

Nor were you surprised by all his arguments. You’d had them with Zenos before, after all. And some of them with van Hydrus, and with his wife. Baelsar might have told you a few more useful things before you had to hear them from His Radiance’s smirking lips, but so it goes.

They should have known better than to bring a Weapon of Light to a peace summit. How else could it end but with the opening of old wounds?

(Well—in lungfuls of seawater, or crystals detonating in a burst of unstable aether, or a simple punch or two.)

All of these sufficed to see you held at gunpoint—you and Hathaar both with barrels against your chin. But. “Don’t waste the ammunition.” That was the Imperial decree, was it not? You think he wants you dead. If he wanted you dead, wouldn’t he have killed you in the tent? Why didn’t you die there?

What a curious question. Still, you do not think your reprieve will last long. And yet it will last longer than you think.

It would last longer still if you’d take my offer. It’s not too late to go, to find a place that does not know X’shasi Kilntreader and wants nothing from her. That does not demand she rise in the morning and join the front lines against an army greater and more powerful than the one that marches behind her.

We’re so alike, Shasi Souleater, in ways you haven’t allowed yourself to see just yet. But you won’t run. I know you.

And when His Radiance offered you a place—at his side; under his heel—you said no.

The world turns on that slender hope. —F

[starcunning]

canalstreetbaker replied to your post “The Dz twins’ Light Party: Colette de Dzemael, AST Odette de...”

I never gave that a lot of thought. Then again, I don't give a lot of stuff much thought.

if i ever write a story where shasi ISN’T charging off to the horizon because she Must Handle This Alone it’ll be useful information to have.

right now she and lensha are doing eureka literally just to keep shasi’s hands busy, along with Full Party member Julien de Vedastus*.